4chan founder launches Canvas into beta

4chan founder Christopher Poole (also know as moot) has launched the first public version of his new website, Canvas. Beta invites are rolling out in a staggered fashion so as to avoid too many people joining at the same time.

Think of Canvas as a cleaned up version of the 4chan, the image-based bulletin board that Poole founded 7 years ago. Canvas is not meant to replace or succeed 4chan; it's merely supposed to be a more mainstream photo site. The community allows users to post content and engage with others, but instead of just posting to a board anonymously, users must first create anonymous accounts. Currently Canvas only contains images, and even has a Remix Editor that lets you alter images directly on the website, but Poole says different formats will eventually be supported, such as audio and video.

Canvas also has a new engagement feature called stickers. The feature lets users interact with content by dragging and dropping stickers (such as LOL or wtf) onto pictures, in order to promote popular content as well as to categorize them.

"We've had a lot of fun playing with it amongst ourselves and with our friends, and look forward to seeing how others use it and all that we'll learn and tweak in the coming weeks," a Canvas spokesperson said in a statement. "Our goal is to create the best place to share and play with images. Canvas in its current form represents just a kernel of our long-term vision for the site, and we couldn't be more excited about what’s in store."